


Black Sun

by orphan_account



Series: Modern AU; Cecil/Carlos [4]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Blood, Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:16:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos doesn't work up the nerve. </p><p>Groundhog Day! AU</p><p>(Warning for suicide, self-harm and blood).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Sun

.

i.

It’s a fierce pseudo-battle, Carlos thinks, as another arrow pierces his skin. The pain is acute, concentrated like sticking a thumb pin too far up a nail, and he grits his teeth. Blood pools near his knuckles, but Carlos manages to grab one of the tiny people, probably the mayor.

“Tell me,” he says, and the pain of a million paper cuts is back full force. “Why are you doing this? Why here, of all places?”

The mayor says nothing, looking petulant in his fist. Carlos wants to shake him, but then another tiny person crawls up his arms and stabs his wrist, almost drowning in the sudden flow of blood.

The ulnar artery (an actual artery has been severed, he’s going to bleed to death with tiny half-humans dancing in triumph on his chest, what the _fuck_ ) is a major artery of the wrist. It isn’t as vital as a jugular, for example, but could still cause extensive blood loss.

Great, he’s turned into Wikipedia for his final moments.

But then Carlos hears the beeping of a cellphone, someone’s fingers moving achingly slow over blocks of numbers, dialling emergency medical services with a shaking voice.

EMS finally arrives, with an angry gurney in tow.  

“Jesus, it’s the _last_ shift and this guy decides to off himself in a bowling alley. What a tool,”

Carlos tries apologizing to the gurney, tries to gesture to the tiny people, but his will to stay alive is apparently dependent on being unconscious. An oxygen mask (drugged, totally drugged) is fitted over his face.

The last thing he sees is purple lips and dulled silver eyes.

_Cecil?_

.

Hospitals are great, especially when you’re visiting and are able to go home after a few hours. They are horrible, however, if the person receiving flowers and consolations is one confused Carlos.

“Look, sir,” The nurse looks like she’d rather lick the floor than talk to him. “You tried to slit your wrists, someone called the ambulance, and we’re keeping you under suicide watch. There are _no_ tiny people in the bowling alley,”

“Am I in Night Vale?”

“ _Yes_ , sir,”

“Suicide watch?”

“Yes, sir. The caller reported you were sobbing into your French fries, and then you cut yourself with the plastic knife. Anything else?”

“Where’s Cecil?”

She looks at him, expression pinched and weary. Carlos thinks she could be pretty without the scrubs, could smile and laugh if she didn’t have this job.

“He’s gone, sir. He left when you were sleeping,”

She leaves, and Carlos feels an ache deep in his chest, pounding angrily within the lung cavity.

 _Quiet,_ he tells it. _He’s gone._

Carlos tightens his fist, and sighs.

Tomorrow, then.

.

_Cecil is smiling, the dappled light of the orchard casting half shadows across his face._

_“Was there something you wanted to tell me, Carlos?”_

_Carlos knows it, he_ knows _it, but his words stick in his throat and the wrong ones come to replace them._

_“The clocks don’t work in Night Vale,”_

_Cecil’s eyes dim. It’s the wrong thing to say, Carlos can feel it in his bones._

_“I know,” says Cecil, and reaches up to pick another apple._

_._

ii.

Carlos sits in the hospital, dreading the night. His nurse (Tamasin, twenty three) visits twice, fixes his IV drip and avoids talking to him. There are ducks on her scrubs, cheerful and yellow.

Other people float in, Josie and Larry Leroy and that one cashier with the gills. They all smile, tight with pity, and leave wilting flowers on his bedside table.

Cecil doesn’t come back, and 11:59 is his last moment of sanity.

.

iv.

The fries are disgusting, or maybe it’s just the sinking feeling in Carlos’ stomach. Cecil was there, _right there_ , eyes warm and inviting, but Carlos had balked, muttering about clouds and broken clocks.

Disappointment radiated out of every single one of Cecil’s pores. Carlos thinks maybe he’s done this before, cried over someone in a bowling alley, but it’s stupid to think so. Even stupider would be if the waiter tripped on his face and spilled chicken tenders all over the large man in the corner who’d been yelling at every waiter for the last thirty minutes.

But then the waiter _does_ trip, comically spilling processed meat all over the large, angry man. Carlos watches it happen, thinks for a millisecond that he has mind control powers, and then remembers yesterday.

The teenage couple should burst into laughter in about, yes, three seconds and the manager of the store should apologize in two minutes and the man should storm off in five.

It happens, down to the last second, until Carlos is face to face with the dark mechanics of a bowling alley.

“We’ve been waiting, Carlos,” The mayor is wearing the same striped pantsuit, miniature and ridiculous, lime green and purple.

The same crazed citizen slits his wrist, but Carlos sees his weapon, sees the plastic knife and struggles to no avail.

“You will learn,” they hiss. “You will,”

.

x.

Tamasin is always unimpressed, Night Vale’s citizens still view him as the _suicidal_ resident scientist, and Cecil always leaves before Carlos can wake up.

This time he rips off the IV drip, runs past nurses and doctors, hospital gown whipping ridiculously between his legs.

Night Vale Radio is closed for the night, but Carlos catches Cecil just in time, stopping him as he steps into his car, placing a tight grip on his arm.

“Cecil,” he wheezes, out of shape. “I have to tell you something. Earlier, I-”

Cecil wrenches his arm away, which is so unlike him it scares Carlos. “You need to get better, Carlos. I won’t hear anything from you until you do,”

His watch beeps 11:59 and Carlos screams himself into the next day.

.

xx.

“Josie,” he says, just before she tries to leave. “I need your help,”

She looks at him with the wisdom of a millennia, eyes folded deep into her skull.

“You certainly need help, son, but not from me,”

No, he isn’t going to let another person walk away from him.

“Please,” his voice is cracking. His fingers ache, and Carlos slips the clipboard and pencil further into the sheets. There’s a tally of twenty.

Josie doesn’t flinch when he talks, doesn’t act surprised when he narrates perfectly the upcoming events of the day. She does, however, keep a tight grip on his hands, an anchor when he starts panicking and glaring at the clock.

“What do you think is happening?”

“The clocks must be broken,” she says, and pats his shoulder before leaving.

How do they not know?

.

(They know.

Cecil holds back tears as Carlos rushes to him, eyes wild and beautiful hair a mess. Cecil wants to cradle him, hold him tight and say _I know I love you I know_.

He almost does, until Erika places a hand on his shoulder, infinitely warning him.

“Carlos needs this,” they say. Cecil doesn’t want it anyways.)

.

xxx.

Carlos changes things, little shifts, starts with ordering a milkshake instead of fries, avoids the bowling alley and heads down to Night Vale Radio Station. It’s not creepy, he reminds himself, to watch Cecil get into his car and drive off. It’s merely an experiment.

The tiny people find him, like they always do. This time it’s in the Dog Park (he’s run out of fucks to give at this point) and they take the form of mini shadow creatures, plunging scythes into his hands.

“Please,” he begs. “I-I want to _live_ ,”

“For what?” Each question is a collective hiss.

“For Cecil,” That’s it, isn’t it? Loving someone so much you start living for them?

“Wrong,” The secretary looks like she pities him, jumping atop his chest with the curved blade.

Carlos is used to the feeling of broken wrists, by now. There’s a lesson in here, one he desperately needs to learn in order to get out of this hellish loop.

If only he knew which one.

.

xxi.

The next day (the same fucking day, actually) finds Carlos sitting in a cheesy Ray Ghibli seminar, watching as people scribble notes in their Ghibli notepads with their Ghibli pens.

“Love hurts, doesn’t it?”

 _Amen,_ thinks Carlos.

“But you know what hurts even more, my friends? The absence of love, not from someone else, but from ourselves. Our hearts are blank and, pardon my language, depressing as s _hit_ ,” A few titters carry along the crowd, but Carlos snaps his spine straight, attention thoroughly grabbed.

“No one wants to live in a shitty house, or a shitty heart, unless they can’t pay rent. Even then, it isn’t a healthy thing to be in, with the fights with the landlord or the termites,” At this point, several termites crawl ominously up Ray Ghibli’s neck.

“So, my friends, I’m telling you to clean up your apartment. Clean it up, dust yourself off, wipe the ketchup stains and make your heart a place for _love_ ,”

The audience stands to their feet, roaring with applause, and Carlos walks out the door, feeling Ray Ghibli’s eyes on his back.

“Thank you,” he bows down. “Thank you all,”

Carlos cries when the treasurer comes for him, but for a very different reason.

.

L.

Every day Carlos tries to help. He’s long accepted the time loop will continue for as long as it wishes, so he meanders along the highway, fixing flat tires and kicking dust as he goes.

In town, Josie lets him paint the fence, pluck apples from her greenhouse and lather peanut butter on the slices. Vaguely, Carlos remembers his mother doing the same thing, remembers the stickiness of the butter and the sweet crunch of fruit.

Erika flaps their wings in delight when they bite in, clapping their hands hard on his back, accidentally burning the skin there with their enthusiasm. Carlos waves off their apologies, unable to hide a smile as he places ice on the wound.

“Why don’t you come back tomorrow?” Josie asks, changing the wet rags he’s been using. “I need someone to cut the grass,”

His smile is a little less bitter than it was yesterday.

“I would like that,”

Stupidly, he wonders if the average citizen will ever get a chance to hurt him. Flat on his back in the alley behind Big Rico’s, Carlos finds it to be a likely possibility.

.

L . (around noon)

“Who do you love?” Carlos asks his reflection.

 _Cecil_. It’s on the tip of his tongue, the obvious answer, but not the right one.

“I-” Carlos rubs his eyes, frustrated. “Who else?”

Today is not the day, he knows.

.

LX.

Carlos wakes to find himself sprawled in an alley behind Big Rico’s. It’s strange, because his days usually start out with a broken clock and the hum of a laboratory.

Hope swells stupidly in his chest, but Carlos promptly squashes it. He has no patience for tiny things disguised as riddles.

Today he decides to visit Josie, take her up on the offer to cut grass. Before he can, however, Hiram McDaniels rears his ugly, fire breathing head and burns the entire city hall.

The streets are aflame. Carlos feels the tell-tale buildup of panic in his chest, but then a woman with gills (cashier, wasn’t it?) grabs a hold of his lapels and shakes him, hard.

“My son,” she gasps, and there is nothing inhuman about her desperation. “He’s stuck in there, laying wreaths. Oh god,” she claps a hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs. Carlos knows the gesture well.

“I’ll help,” he says, and he’s going to die anyway, why not die trying not to for once.

Flames lick his clothes, curl hot around his skin and singe flesh. It hurts, obviously it fucking hurts, but Carlos is pumped with adrenaline and a bone deep need to prove something.

He finds the boy, eventually, cowering under an oak desk. Whimpering slightly, the boy looks at Carlos like a saviour, a hero, and Carlos shakes off the feeling that tells him he doesn’t deserve it.

“C’mere,” he rasps, smoke filling his lungs. Slowly, the boy bounds into his arms and clings to his neck with an iron grip.

Timbers fall, groaning under the collapsed weight. The boy releases him long after they are safe on the sidewalk, unclenching when his mother comes near. She kisses his face, fawning, loving kisses, and her gills flap affectionately. Carlos smiles, and starts to walk away.

“Wait,” she calls out, fingers outstretched. “Who do you love?”

A smile curls her lips, and Carlos tries not to smile until he answers correctly.

“Myself,” Then Cecil, obviously, but Carlos doesn’t want to wreck his second chance.

A beam, few metres long and half a foot thick, falls on his head.

 

.

 

“Carlos?”

Carlos opens his eyes. A Ray Ghibli inspirational poster stares back at him, and the crisp scent of apples permeates the room. Josie sits in her chair, knitting a scarf in thirty degree weather.

“Feeling alright, son? You were picking apples with Cecil in the back, and you just blacked out,”

The orchard. _The orchard._

Oh.

“Josie, what’s the date today?”

She furrows her brow, peering at him over her bifocals.

“How hard did you hit your head, boy? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Carlos shakes his head profusely. He will _never_ need to visit the hospital, ever. She must understand, because Josie gets up (complaining about her aching joints, mind you, I’m not that young anymore) and flips the calendar hanging off the wall.

“Well, see here Carlos,” she hums. “It’s the twenty fifth,”

Carlos tries not to jump with joy, especially with the growing lump on his forehead.

“Thanks,” he breathes out. “For everything,”

He fails to notice her knowing smile as he wrenches open the porch door.

.

“Cecil,” he calls out. Carlos’ heart feels like it might burst any second.

“Yes, dear Carlos?” Cecil is still bending down, placing a shiny apple in the wicker basket. Sweat falls off in pearl drops off his forehead, irrigating the grass.

“’I wanted to tell you that I love you. And not for you, but for me. I love you because I love myself,”

Cecil grins broadly, kisses him with apple lips and a devious tongue, and Carlos nearly melts before he realizes he isn’t finished.

“Do you, ah, do you _get_ that? I know I’m probably being confusing as fuck right now but I just spent a month not loving myself and it was horrible and I-”

“Yes, Carlos,” How many times has Carlos yearned to hear that? “I understand completely,”

“Good,” he says, and kisses Cecil, tongue and all, in the trees and the wind.

Good.

. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, this is angsty. But I hope the whole message of “love yourself” wasn't too cheesy, but I really want readers to take that message away from this fic. 
> 
> Also, I have warned for the triggers of suicide and low self-esteem in the tags and description and added an archive warning. If I need to do anything else, please notify me. 
> 
> Heavily inspired by the Bill Murray movie “Groundhog Day.”


End file.
